Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: olddude
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 05:49 PM

And this one really presses my buttons. It is our very own Amos doing My Sweet Wyoming Home

Superb
Amos Sweet Wyoming Home

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: olddude
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 05:41 PM

Art Thieme - The Santa Fe Trail
or Art Thieme - Cowboy's Barbara Allen

or Art Thieme - Blue Mountain

(I am kinda prejudiced) :-)

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Artful Codger
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 05:38 PM

Alla en el Rancho Grande (Lorenzo Barcelata, 1925)
When It's Night Time in Nevada (Pascoe, Dumage, Clint, 1931)
I'm a Texas Cowboy (trad.)
Keep Smiling, Old Pal (trad.)

Most of my favorites are the REAL cowboy songs, from before the radio/movie/rhinestone cowboy days, but they're the usual suspects, already listed. Elsewise, my favorites are (false modesty aside) old cowboy-era poems I put tunes to myself, like:

Batchin' (Charles Badger Clark, 1915)
Coyote (Bret Harte, 1869)
Cowboy's Wild Song to His Herd (Wesley Beggs, 1912)
Old Buck's Ghost (Frank Benton, 1903)
Disheartened Ranger (M.B. Smith, ca. 1874)
Night Herding Song (Harry Stephens, 1909)

The Carter Family sang an uninspiring version of "Cowboy's Wild Song to His Herd," and you can find several tunes to "Night Herding Song"--notably, Don Edwards does it--, but I'm unaware of previous settings for the other poems. I've set some others, but for me personally, they're second-stringers, not as likely to burst forth from the shower unless I'm trying to refresh my memory of them. Yup, that's my criterion for favorites: which are rusty from the shower?

I used to groan at "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" till I ran across a great old tune for it in a minor mode. Now I sing it interleaving the two tunes, and it's become a shower song. (Of course, by the time I'm finished, so is the hot water.)

I've also come to enjoy "Home on the Range," "Red River Valley" and some other songs I was conditioned to snub as a boy--they're really quite nice once you get past the done-to-death bits.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: chazkratz
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 04:30 PM

Let's see--there's the theme song from "Blazing Saddles" and "I'm an Old Cowhand (From the Rio Grande)".
And seriously, has anyone mentioned "Don't Fence Me In" or Woody's "The Range of the Buffalo"?

Charles

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: topical tom
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 12:36 PM

When It's Roundup Time in Texas and the Cactus is in Bloom, [=When the Bloom Is on the Sage?] especially as sung by Suzy Bogguss.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 11:31 AM

I have just put one of my two favourites, The Santa Fe Trail, and am planning to put the other, I'm Bound to Follow the Longhorn Cows, on my YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/mgmyer


OK ~~ so I'm not a cowboy. I'm not even American. I have spent a total of approx 12 days of my life in the West [California, Utah, Arizona, Nevada], riding around in a Discovery America coach.

Want to make something of it? How fast can you draw!?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Slag
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 06:13 AM

Yes SRS, The Strawberry Roan is the quintessential Western song. It captures the dialect, history, and status of the American cowboy. It's a real slice of life.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Sep 10 - 02:26 AM

Check out some of the albums by Ernie Sites

http://erniesites.com/index2.shtml

Eddie1 (between laptops cos my last one was stolen)

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Beer
Date: 13 Sep 10 - 10:55 PM

Sweet Baby James

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: olddude
Date: 13 Sep 10 - 09:38 PM

Art Thieme doing Billy Vanero

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: frogprince
Date: 13 Sep 10 - 06:42 PM

SRS, have you heard Amos sing cowboy-type stuff; don't remember right now if The Strawberry Roan was included in what I've heard linked, but I'll wager Amos wouldn't do it wrong; he has to have hoss shit on the one boot and longhorn shit on the tother.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Sep 10 - 02:36 AM

Ed McCurdy singing "The Strawberry Roan" is about as good as it gets. Unless it is just about anybody singing "Streets of Laredo" (see all of the discussions of the roots of this song scattered around Mudcat).

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Amos
Date: 11 Sep 10 - 01:52 AM

Buffalo Skinners and Diamond Joe also. High-Chinned Bob.

You know this thread was running strong in 2000. That was ten years ago. How'd I get glued to this Mudcat cayuse for ten damn years???


A

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Slag
Date: 11 Sep 10 - 01:01 AM

Not mentioned thus far:

Pennsylvania Pal

You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma

The Master's Call

The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde

Blue Shadows

Curly Joe from Idaho

Cattle Call

The Ballad of Irving (The Hundred and Twenty-Second Fastest Gun in the West)
    (Which is a spoof on Lorne Greene's "Ringo")

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 11:02 PM

frogprince, did you post that a few years ago? I started reading it to my Rog and he recognised it immediately. Well-written!

We'd miss out, big time, without a mention of Mudcatter, Rex's, Jack Thorp's Songs of the Cowboys. It is a wondrous collection done on period instruments with some real favourites.

I love them all, all that Art Thieme has done, and all that my dad raised us on including Billy Venero, Zebra Dun, Little Joe the Wrangler, and a bunch more!

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Midchuck
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 10:07 PM

That's funny. I was reading this thread and wondered why I didn't mention any of the great songs on Tom Russell's "Indians Cowboys Horses Dogs" CD. Then I noticed that I last posted to this thread in 2003. That CD was released in early '04. Duh. Mudcat messes up your time sense.

"Tonight We Ride" is one of my favorite songs ever. Joyfully antiheroic. I'm also very fond of "No Telling," by Linda Thompson, which Tom made into a cowboy song by changing just a few words (with her blessing, as I understand it). I'd have sung it at Kendall and Jacqui's wedding if I'd been there and nobody had suppressed me.

There is also a wonderful cover of "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts," done by Russell, Joe Ely, and Eliza Gilkyson performing as a committee; one of "East Texas Red," and one of Marty Robbins's "El Paso," which is probably the only cover that doesn't really measure up - but then the original came out at an impressionable time in my life, and I'm sentimental about it. And Tom didn't have Grady Martin.

Also, two settings by Tom of Paul Zarzyski poems, "Bucking Horse Moon" and "All This Way for the Short Ride," and a very funny song about Edward Abbey, using the tune of "Buffalo Skinners."

My ten CDs for a desert island would include this one, "Cowboyography" and "Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs." That leaves only seven for all other genres. I could be in trouble.

Peter

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 08:11 PM

A Border Affair (Spanish is the Loving Tongue).

Or I could list a bunch, Art Thieme's for a start.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 07:47 PM

What day is it? Tomorrow the favorite song will be different. What is the last song I heard? That is probably my favorite...for now.

Bar none (no that's not a ranch) The Sons of the Pioneers is my favorite singer. My laptop contains the contents of six LPs and and twelve CDs of SOP, Roy Rogers (w/ and w/o SOP) and a Bob Nolan solo CD.
I have culled duplicate recordings, but have as many as five different renditions of some songs. This are from different iterations of the group over the years, radio transcriptions, etc. iTunes tells me I have 157 unique recordings that if played straight through would take over six-and-a-half hour to complete.

There are are many current and recent singers of the genre. Don Edwards, Michal Martin Murphey, Brenn Hill, a reconstituted Riders of the Purple Sage, Dave Stamey, Justis and the Montanas and the late Chris LeDoux come quickly to mind. They are every bit as good as the performers of the 30s and 40s, and have better technology. Too, there are scores of amateurs and semi-pros, often quite good and original, that we only hear as ancillary acts at festivals.

Cowboy Music Forever!

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Art Thieme
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 07:01 PM

Hey, I forgot one I did all the time:

The Ballad of 'Dobe Bill (learned from a Folkways LP by Cisco Houston)

This was printed by John Lomax in his book as "The Killer"

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Andy Jackson
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 06:58 PM

I just started a new thread ( American Museum in Britain) and just below I see this thread. I rest my case!!

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Art Thieme
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 06:44 PM

Some that I sang often and/or put on records:

Billy Vanero
The State of Illinois (Move Your Family Westward)
Cowboy's Barbara Allen (from Del Bray in Cheyenne-1962)
Blue Mountain
Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie
The Cherokee Queen by Carl Oglesby--via Utah Phillips)
Gonna Leave Old Texas Now
The Big Combine--by Jock Coleman-1919-from Glenn Ohrlin
The Red River Shore
The Portland County Jail
The Wilderness Road--Jimmy Morris Driftwood
The Kansas Cyclone
Night Rider's Lament--by Michael Burton
Sioux Indians
When I Was a Cowboy
The Goodnight-Loving Trail by Utah Phillips
Colorado Trail
Ridin' Down the Canyon
Zack the Mormon Engineer
East Texas Red--by Woody Guthrie
Blowin’ Down This Road
Nine Hundred Miles
The Santa Fe Trail
The Cowboy Fireman (from Mac McClintock)
I Want to Be in Brooklyn (For the Blackouts in the Spring)
    by Craig Johnson

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Desi C
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 11:29 AM

How about some of the Sons Of The Pioneers, recordings, Tumbling Tumbleweeds, (Ghost) Riders in the Sky, etc.? Shenandoah (Across The Wide Missouri) is good. A Four-Legged Friend, Roy Rogers. Banks of the Old Pontchartrain, Old Log Train, both Hank Wiliams. Streets of Laredo, Marty Robbins and El Paso. Good luck, need to revive many of the old western songs

Desi C

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: frogprince
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 10:27 AM

Another case of a vintage thread revived in an off-the-wall way, but I really enjoyed reading through this. A lot of songs I love were cited. I don't know that anyone mentioned "Colorado Trail"; Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsen, and Priscilla Herdman have a recording that I consider just achin' beautiful.

The first time I ever fell in love with a song, it was "The Strawberry Roan" as sung by Gene Autry. About 1969, I discovered Cisco Houston's recording of "Zebra Dun". A few years ago THIS came together in my head.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,Henryp
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 06:04 AM

Doney Gal

A cowboy's life is a weary thing
For it's rope and brand and ride and sing
Yes, day or night, in the rain and hail
He'll stay with his dogies out on the trail

It's rain or shine, sleet or snow,
Me and my Doney Gal are on the go
Yes, rain or shine, sleet or snow,
Me and my Doney Gal are bound to go

from Our Singing Country, John and Alan Lomax

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 05:27 AM

Cowboy music and poetry is alive and well today. There are many festivals that feature these performers. and the Western Jubilee Recording company http://www.westernjubilee.com/ features some fine examples..Don Edwards and many more. One such festival is in December...www.Montereycowboy.org which is coming up Dec 10-11-12 2010 or the National Cowboy Gathering in Elko on Jan. 26-29 2011. There are some video and audio recordings on the website www.westernfolklife.org. (see cybercast) By far my favorite song is
http://www.nightriderslament.com/ [Night Rider's Lament] by Michael Burton.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: kendall
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 04:02 AM

Probably the saga of Billy Venero. It was in my high school English textbook.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 03:33 AM

It is impossible for me to pick a single cowboy/western song or singer. The one that I sing most often is Woody's Philadelphia Lawyer but Marty Robbins' collection of Gunfighter Ballads sets the bar! Then you have the old Western movie stars like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, Rex Allan, etc. Wilf Carter (aka Montana Slim) lived the life about which he sang and to a degree Ian Tyson as well. There was just too much great stuff to pick a single preference! Roy Rogers was my cowboy hero when I was a kid and he holds the distinction of being twice inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame, once as himself and once as a founding member of the Sons Of The Pioneers. So much great stuff over the years but sadly there are few recording artists today who come even close and that is a pity!

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,richard
Date: 09 Sep 10 - 11:55 PM

"The Little Red Caboose behind the Train / In 1992" - does anyone remember or have the 78rpm that came out in the 50s/60s? I bought it in the UK but lost it.
who was the group that sang the songs?

[Could be The Rocky Mountaineers, on Columbia (F.B. 1249), which came out in 1935? See the Internet Archive for side A and side B. -- A Mudelf.]

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,richard
Date: 09 Sep 10 - 11:51 PM

been trying to get a copy of a 78rpm record that I bought in the UK in the 1950s that had this song on one side and In 1992 on the flip.
Does anyone remember them or who sang them?

Subject: Lyr Add: A BORDER AFFAIR (Charles Badger Clark)
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 08:40 AM

My favorite is "A Border Affair" by Charles Badger Clark ... also known as "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue" ... back in the early '60s, Ian Tyson cleaned it up by getting rid of the interracial relationship at its core ... he also reversed some words in the last verse ... seems that every person that I've heard do this since then has the last verse screwed up (thanks to Mr. Tyson) ... he sings, "left my heart and lost her own"


Spanish is the loving tongue
Soft as music, light as spray
Was a girl I learned it from
Living down Sonora way
I don't look much like a lover
Yet I say her love words over
Often when I'm all alone
Mi amore mi Corazon

Nights when she knew where I'd ride
She would listen for my spurs
Fling the big door open wide
Raise them laughin' eyes of hers
And my heart would not stop beating
When I heard her tender greeting
Whispered soft for me alone
Mi amore mi Corazon

Moonlight in the patio
Old Senora nodding near
Me and Juana talking low
So the Madre couldn't hear
How those hours would go a-flyin'
And too soon I'd hear her sighin'
In her little sorry tone
Adios mi Corazon

But one time I had to fly
For a foolish gamblin' fight,
And we said a swift goodbye
In that black unlucky night
When I'd loosed her arms from clingin'
With her words the hoofs kept ringin'
As I galloped north alone
Adios mi Corazon

Never seen her since that night
I can't cross the Line, you know
She was Mex and I was white
Like as not it's better so
Yet I've always sort of missed her
Since that last wild night I kissed her
Left her heart and lost my own
Adios mi Corazon

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: horace hockey
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 07:19 AM

Without a doubt, my favorite is Streets of Laredo. I am just a beginner on banjo but hope to someday create a song about the American Mustang. I am the activity director of the Indiana Mustang and Burro Association. Our group supports the BLM adoption program.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Amos
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 04:24 AM

The Glory Trail (High-Chin Bob), a great modern cowboy ballad.


A

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: open mike
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 02:17 AM

One I discovered this year was "Corn, Water and Wood", a Christmas song.
It is by Carol Elliot and has been sung by Riders in the Sky, Michael Martin Murphey, Bryndle, and others.

Also one called the Gift by Stephanie Davis. Another Christmas one.

There is a song called The Gift by Ian Tyson, too, about Charles M. Russell.

I also like to perform another Canadian song -- Cowboy Christmas by
Connie Kaldor and BIM.

And a poem from Austrailian whose name I forget...not Banjo Paterson.. When the Children Come Home..oh yes, Henry Lawson...

And another song by a Canadian...Small Victory, by Garnet Rogers...about a horse that he got at auction, and she was destined for the glue factory. She gave birth to a colt which was named Victory.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 01:14 AM

Guest, Lucyann,

Usually it is best to start a whole new thread to request lyrics. You did a good job of finding a related thread, though.:-) Anyway, I have started a thread for you with the word of Badger Clark's poem, which Don Edwards set to Annie Laurie. You can find the thread by clicking HERE.

Welcome to the Mudcat.

kat

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: fumblefingers
Date: 12 Apr 08 - 09:31 PM

"Ridin' Down the Canyon." Roy Rogers and Smiley Burnette sang it, among others.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,Lucyann
Date: 12 Apr 08 - 07:25 PM

Does anyone have the lyrics for this song? I know that Ed Trickett sings "A Bad Half Hour" to the tune of "Annie Laurie."

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: JedMarum
Date: 07 May 06 - 04:54 PM

KIM C - your comments re: Annie Laurie and Night Rider's Lament ... I played the Sam Houston Folk Fest just a couple of weeks ago with Don Edwards and some very very fine cowboy singers. Don did a just beautiful version of this song. With 1000 people at the festival, you could have heard a pin drop while he was singing. It was something to behold.

Great song and a lovely tie from the cowboy to this fine old Scottish song!

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,Mudlark
Date: 21 Mar 03 - 04:48 PM

Beccy...Re Blue Shadows and The Three Amigos...they did a pretty good job of it too, I thought. Not too shabby with My Little Buttercup either, dance routine not withstanding!

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 21 Mar 03 - 08:53 AM

There was a song - I think it was written by Ian Petrie, which had the chorus:

You can tell all your friends when you heat those hoofbeats thrum,
That the nearest thing to Silver is the Lone Ranger's Bum.

I'll try and find the rest.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Hrothgar
Date: 21 Mar 03 - 02:36 AM

Depending on the mood I'm in -

The Goodnight-Loving Trail
Colorado Trail
Little Joe the Wrangler
Home on the Range
Red River Valley
I Ride an Old Paint (yep, Ard Macha, love Ronstadt's version)

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Beccy
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 01:29 PM

Boromir- Did you ever hear Martin Short, Steve Martin and Chevy Chase (I kid you not...) do that one?

Beccy

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,boromir
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 01:27 PM

The best cowboy song ever written was Blue Shadows on the Trail by Johnny Lange and Eliot Daniel.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,Banjoman
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 12:30 PM

Lots of great songs, but if you want one that pokes a bit of fun at the old west while still hitting a hard message, listen to Debby McClatchy singing "Seeing the Elephant" It's on one of her early LP's and I don't know who wrote it.
Good Luck with your search

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Mr Happy
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 11:28 AM

I've a few songs of this genre in my current repertoire.

A Four-Legged Friend, Abilene, Folsom Prison Blues, Lonesome Pine, Cool Water

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Beccy
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 10:56 AM

I luh-uh-uh-uhve, The Rivers of Texas, as recorded by Bill Staines.

Beccy

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 10:21 AM

Butterfly mentioned "I've Got No Use for the Women". It's in the DT, at
THIS LOCATION

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: Lyr Add: BROWN EYED LEE
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 10:14 PM

I'd like to add a couple of others "I'd Like to Be in Texas When They Round Up in the Spring", "That's How The Girls Are In Texas" and this one "Brown Eyed Lee"

BROWN EYED LEE

Kind friends, if you will listen, a story I will tell
About the final bust-up that happened down in Bell
I courted a brown-eyed maiden known by the name of Lee
And when I popped the question, she said she'd marry me.

I went and bought the license March eighteen ninety-nine
Expecting in a few days the darling would be mine
Her mother grew quite angry and said it could not be
She said she had another, picked out for Brown-eyed Lee.

She talked to friends and neighbors and said that she would fight,
She'd get her old six-shooter out and put old Red to flight.
But lovers laugh at shooters, and the old she-devil, too.
I said I'd have my darling if she did not prove untrue.

I borrowed Dad's old buggy and got Jim's forty-one.
And started down to Kerns's, thinking I would have some fun.
I'm not the one to craw-fish when I am in a tight;
I said "I'll have my angel and not be put to flight.

I went on down to Kerns's with the devil in my head,
I said, "I'll have my darling, or I'll leave the old folks dead."
Good fortune fell upon me, my darling proved untrue.
I gave her back her letters and bid her a fond adieu.

I pressed her to my aching heart, kissed her a last farewell,
And prayed a permanent prayer to God to send her Ma to hell.
I sold my cows to J.M.G. my corn to K.M.P
And cursed the day I first met that darling brown-eyed Lee.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Bruce
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 07:42 PM

Buddies in the Saddle, Carter Family

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: BanjoRay
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 06:06 PM

How come nobody's mentioned The Tennessee Stud, written by Jimmy Driftwood and performed by Doc Watson on the Will The Circle Be Unbroken album? Totally perfect musical poetry, with superb guitar picking!
Ray

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 05:44 PM

at Rose, the Record Lady's site mentioned above, you can hear two
versions of "Oklahoma Hills" (am I pushing Rose? *grin*...you betcha!)


'Oklahoma Hills' - Hank Thompson (A-8)
'Oklahoma Hills' - Jack Guthrie (A-8)